HONG KONG — For years, no matter what was happening elsewhere, global companies bet billions upon billions of dollars that China’s consumers would keep spending money.

香港——多年来，无论其它地方发生了什么，全世界的公司都在把成千上万亿美元押在中国消费者会继续花钱上。

Now, just when the world economy could use their financial firepower, they are holding back, worried about the country’s slowing growth, a trade war with the United States and rising amounts of personal debt.

如今，就在世界经济急需他们的财力支援时，他们却退缩了。他们担心中国增长放缓，担心和美国的贸易战，以及日益增加的个人债务。

Zhao Zheng, 26, is among the cost-conscious consumers.

26岁的赵正就属于价格敏感型消费者。

On Thursday, Mr. Zhao, a real estate agent, was browsing smartphones made by Xiaomi, a Chinese rival to Apple that prices its handsets at a fraction of what the American tech giant charges for iPhones. He said the success in China of Xiaomi and Miniso, a chain of low-cost variety stores, suggested that Chinese consumers were looking to get more for their money.

A significant pullback could have a big impact on a world looking for engines of growth, on companies that counted on China’s continuing expansion and on global investors who have long viewed Chinese consumers as a steady source of profits.

对于寻找增长引擎的世界，指望中国持续扩张的企业，以及长期以来视中国的消费者为稳定利润来源的全球投资者而言，一次大幅回调会带来巨大影响。

Stock markets stumbled again on Thursday, in part over concerns that American companies and manufacturers are starting to feel the effects from the slowdown in China and the trade war. The S&P 500 sank 2.5 percent, while shares of Apple dropped nearly 10 percent after the company unexpectedly slashed its financial forecast, citing disappointing iPhones sales in the country.

The rise of the Chinese consumer is not over yet, and Apple’s disappointing numbers stem in part from the company’s own decisions. But the weakness at Apple followed reams of other data — declining car sales, faltering retail sales, a slumping property market, a tougher job market — that signal Chinese consumers may be losing their once unshakable confidence.

The sagging confidence could undermine China’s efforts to redirect its economy and spur growth.

信心低迷可能会颠覆中国重新调整经济和刺激增长的努力。

The Chinese government hopes consumers will become a greater source of economic growth as the country’s longtime reliance on government-sponsored infrastructure projects and old-line industries like steel and cement pays ever-smaller dividends. In recent years, Beijing has rolled out a huge social safety net, tax breaks and other incentives to get people to spend more of their own money on the trappings of middle-class life.

The spending slowdown in China could be a worrying sign for many of America’s biggest companies, too, at a time when their profits and stock prices are under pressure.

对许多美国最大的公司而言，中国消费支出的放缓也可能会是个令人担忧的迹象，眼下它们的利润和股价正承受着压力。

Greater China — a region that includes mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — is Apple’s third-largest market after the United States and Europe, accounting for $52 billion in annual sales in the company’s most recent fiscal year. General Motors, through local joint ventures, sells more cars in China than it does in the United States. Eight percent of Procter & Gamble’s total sales in 2017 came from Greater China.

Other companies are also feeling the pinch. China’s auto market, the biggest in the world, saw sales fall during the first 11 months of last year. Sales of all smartphones fell by 13 percent in the third quarter of 2018.

其他公司也日益感受到压力。作为世界第一大的中国汽车市场，去年前11个月销售下滑。2018年第三季度，各类智能手机的销量下降了13%。

Chinese consumers continued to spend relatively briskly during other recent slowdowns, and they could still help get the country’s economy back on track. But they have reasons to be reticent now.

在近年的其他经济减速中，中国的消费者持续保持了相对活跃的支出，而且能继续帮助该国的经济回到正轨。但如今他们有理由谨慎对待。

By many measures, the country’s growth has slowed because of government efforts to wean the economy off a heavy reliance on borrowing as well as other policies that have shaken the confidence of the country’s entrepreneurs.

从很多方面来看，中国的增长已放缓，原因在于政府努力使经济脱离严重依赖借贷的模式，以及其它已经撼动了该国企业家信心的政策。

“China is at a turning point in its economy,” said Andrew Collier, the founder of research firm Orient Capital Research. “They’ve basically been on a debt-fueled binge for a decade.” He added, “It’s difficult to turn the ship from industry to consumer at a time of rough waters.”

China has too many apartments that home buyers do not want, depressing a property market that is the largest source of wealth for Chinese households. The stock market lost around a quarter of its value in 2018.

中国有太多家庭购房者不想要的公寓，从而抑制了中国家庭财产的最大来源——房地产市场。2018年，股市市值缩水约四分之一。

And although they have a long way to go to catch up to Americans, Chinese households are laboring under growing amounts of debt. Unorthodox Chinese lenders like the online shadow-banking networks known as peer-to-peer lenders are stumbling, giving consumers fewer places to borrow more.

Declining business confidence, rising labor costs and the trade war with the United States also appear to be hurting the job market.

企业信心下降、劳动力成本上升以及同美国的贸易战似乎也在损害就业市场。

China does not disclose reliable unemployment data. But a recent survey by Mr. Collier of job postings, recruitment ads, numbers of applicants on recruitment websites and interviews with corporate managers suggested labor demand had weakened significantly. Hiring demand in import and export industries has been hit especially hard, falling 53 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, the survey found.

Against that backdrop, it is not surprising that many consumers are looking for ways to spend less.

在这样的背景下，许多消费者设法减少支出也就不足为奇了。

Wang Xiaochuan, who made about $145,000 a year as a pharmaceutical sales representative in Yantai in 2015, now makes less than a third of that thanks to a tightening of regulations on the drug industry. He has cut back his spending, buying Clarks shoes instead of the more expensive Ecco brand, or Coach goods rather than Louis Vuitton.

“I’m hearing a lot more bad news about the economy than good news now,” he said.

“宏观经济听到的负面消息大于正面消息，”他说。

In a country with an aspirational culture that for decades has encouraged people to get rich, Apple has long held a special place. Having a new iPhone meant its owner had made it. Seven years ago, the release of a new iPhone set off scuffles in front of an Apple store in Beijing.

But price increases have put the iPhone beyond the reach of more and more Chinese buyers. An iPhone XR starts at 6,499 yuan, or about $950, just over two and a half months’ worth of disposable income for the average Chinese person.

Rumors once circulated about young people selling kidneys to buy an iPhone. Now, the online joke goes, it would cost two kidneys.

曾经有传言说年轻人用卖肾的钱买iPhone。现在，网上有个笑话说，买iPhone需要两个肾。

On the last day of 2018, William Tan, a 30-year-old university teacher in the southern city of Nanning, replaced his iPhone 7 with a phone made by Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant. Although the Huawei phone cost more than $700, about a month’s salary for him, it was still more than $200 cheaper than the base iPhone XR. He had used an iPhone 5, 6 and 7. But when his iPhone 7 broke down, he found he could no longer afford the latest iPhone.

“If the labor market does worsen in 2019 or if financial conditions don’t improve, if the stock market remains low, all this could weigh on consumer confidence,” Mr. Li said.

“如果劳动力市场真的在2019年出现恶化，或者金融状况没有改善，又或者股市依然低迷，所有这些都可能会打击消费者的信心，”李炜说。

Given the uncertainty, many Chinese spenders will most likely continue to scrimp.

鉴于这种不确定性，许多中国消费者很可能会继续省吃俭用。

Wu Yan, a tech company worker who was looking at Xiaomi phones on Thursday afternoon, said he had also tried Apple and Huawei phones and had decided they were not much different from one another. What matters, he said, was the apps, and they work the same from phone to phone.

But Mr. Wu, 40, also said many middle-class Chinese people like him had reached a stage where their work was stable, their income was secure and they no longer needed to show off their spending power. His computer at home? It’s four or five years old now, but it still works fine.